The exemplary embodiment relates to a system and method for promoting environmental behavior by users of electromechanical devices, such as printers, for execution of jobs. It finds particular application in conjunction with a network printing system in which multiple shared printers are available to users for printing their print jobs and will be described with particular reference thereto.
To improve operations, both in terms of environmental impact and cost, organizations such as companies, government organizations, schools, residential facilities, and the like, have attempted to promote a more environmentally conscious behavior in many areas of operation. However, to motivate users to change their habits in order to contribute to a collective objective is a complex matter, both at work and in society at large. The measures used in expressing environmental impact are difficult for users to grasp. The concept of a ton of carbon, for example, is meaningless to many people, both in terms of its size and the impact it may have on the environment. Additionally, employees may view a company's promotion of environmentally conscious behavior as merely a cost saving exercise.
In environments such as transportation and home energy consumption, consumers have been provided with environmental information in terms of CO2 consumption (often referred to as the “carbon footprint”), which is widely accepted as a factor affecting climate change. The accurate association of CO2 emissions with specific processes is complex, as the span of the processes and the factors involved are difficult to determine with precision. Experiments done in the UK with respect to home behavior concerning energy consumption have shown positive effects when the information is presented to the consumers by means of “smart meters” that facilitate the understanding of the current and temporal state of use (see, e.g., Darby, S. “Why, what, when, how, where and who? Developing UK policy on metering, billing and energy display devices,” in Proc. ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings, Asilomar, Calif. Aug. 17-22, 2008). There is no completely agreed upon definition of what a smart meter is. One widely-used definition introduced by the UK Industry Metering Advisory Group includes several dimensions which go beyond bare measurement of consumption. It includes “storing of measured data for multiple time periods” and “analysis of the data and a local display of the data in a meaningful form to the consumer”. Still, it remains to be specified which data should be presented and which form of presentation would be meaningful to the consumer.
Standardization bodies, such as the ISO, address this issue through the creation of technical committees charged with the study of a certain process and determination of the carbon footprint associated with that process. In the area of printing, the ISO Technical Committee overseeing graphic technology standards (ISO TC 130) has initiated a committee for the printing and publishing industries. Currently, there is no standard method for measuring carbon footprint in this sector. Also, there is no consensus as to how to present this information to users in an effective way. CO2 calculations may depend on how far one goes in the production chain. For example, when computing the amount of CO2 consumed by a print job, it is difficult to estimate what account should be taken of the manufacturing process of the printer and the CO2 it consumes, or the transportation costs of paper and ink. Further, these are environmental costs over which the end user may have little or no control.
Above-mentioned U.S. application Ser. No. 12/773,165 discloses a system and method for quantifying printer usage for review by a user. Data containing information related to a print job and community data relating to resource usage by members of a plurality of communities within a system are collected. A resource profiling component receives the marking engine data and the community data to evaluate resource usage by a user compared to one or more other users within their community. The system of Ser. No. 12/773,165 increases user awareness of printer usage by presenting the information graphically. However, this may not provide sufficient motivation to effect behavioral change.
Users often have some choice in the printers that they use and can select options, such as whether to print in black and white or color, the type of paper to use, and so forth. Additionally, they have a choice as to how many times a document is printed. Often, the behavior of users in their printing is not motivated by environmental concerns. They may select, for example, to print on the closest printer, use default settings, or print a document multiple times during its creation, simply as a matter of convenience. Additionally, the print-on-demand nature of most network printing systems may result in printers being woken up from a low energy sleep mode to an awake mode for printing a single document when the user requesting printing did not need the document immediately. As a result, consumables are used and power consumed by devices which may needlessly impact the environment.
The exemplary system and method promote environmentally-concerned behavior by users of such devices.